Today Dr. Thomas Kowalski, a high profile Milwaukee pediatrician, has surrendered his license to practice medicine after the Wisconsin State Medical Board launched an investigation of him for sexually assaulting boys as a Boy Scout official and physician in the 1980’s. Kowalski’s admissions were found in secret files being maintained by the Boy Scouts national headquarters that were court ordered for public release last month. Since then additional information and complaints are

surfacing about Kowalski, and it is likely that there may be potentially many victims of the pediatrician both in the Milwaukee community, but also around the world, since Kowalski traveled as a medical missionary.

But Kowalski is clearly not the only person that needs to be investigated. Disturbing questions remain in this case. According to the Boy Scouts file, Kowalski’s admissions were reported to the Medical Board who apparently cut a secret deal with him that, if he went into “counseling”, there would be no action or record in his medical file. How could individuals on the Medical Board allow an admitted child molester to have continual, daily, private access to hundreds, if not thousands of children over the course of his career?

It’s unclear if there were any other complaints made to the board. The obvious questions which must be asked are who handled Kowalski’s case and are there others like him practicing medicine with a history of having sexually assaulted children or adults? The State Medical Board needs to get to the bottom of how Kowalski escaped justice; he should be compelled to reveal all the fellow

professionals who have assisted him in covering up any of his crimes, and those individuals should be investigated, disciplined, and if necessary prosecuted for failing to report child abuse. Additionally, the Medical Board needs to urge victims, parents, and any witnesses that have information about Kowalski to immediately call police.

If parents knew that Kowalski was an admitted child sex offender they would never have allowed their children to be examined and treated by him as their physician. This is an opportunity for the Medical Board to reopen their past files, call for help from the community for information on any physician or medical professional that has harmed a child or patient, and hold accountable any official in the medical community who has not acted responsibly to protect children and the vulnerable.

SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, is the world’s oldest and largest support group for clergy abuse victims. We’ve been around for 23 years and have more than 12,000 members. Despite the word “priest” in our title, we have members who were molested by religious figures of all denominations, including nuns, rabbis, bishops, and Protestant ministers. Our national website is SNAPnetwork.org. The local Wisconsin website is SNAPwisconsin.com.